nForce 790i SLI/Ultra chipset mobos - Reviews/OC/Guides

[Darkatom]

Can anyone tell me what the "cpu fsb" voltage setting on the evga 790i actually does ?

[BenchZowner]

That's the FSB Termination aka VTT Voltage.
It helps you when you're going over 400MHz FSB with C2Ds/C2Qs to gain stability ( it's not the most crucial factor, but it certainly does help, and sometimes if lower than required prevents you from being stable ).
"Supposed" max safe VTT Voltage for the 45nm CPUs is 1.4V and 1.5V for the 65nm CPUs.

[Tyke]

Thanks, Tyke. Wishing you good luck in finding a solutiong to your "lock up" problems(pun intended). Also, on other note, you seem to be such a popular person on the Asus forums.

The Asus forums are a bit more frustrating than being amongst the generally more knowledgeable people here!

[Tyke]

Hey tyke
I think we have the same problem as well as HardCase and many others

Are you getting those freezing while watching movies? Cause this issue is around everywhere and Im currently working it out with an NVIDIA technician.
Im getting this issues with 175.16 WHQL, 175.80 BETA and 174.74 BETA

However, when I disable SLI, no problems whatsoever. 100% estable and no corruptions 15 hours estable with 0704

But I miss SLI... which is estable in games anyways

Yes I get the freeze when watching movies also.

[slim142]

With SLI enabled, ill get a freeze pretty quick in anything. I must admit, i havnt really watched much on this computer, but when im using the TV tuner it has crashed on occasion with SLI enabled.

However i get no crashes with SLI disabled with TV.

I do however, very rarely id like to point out (maybe half a dozen times...ever), get the "freeze" that happens with SLI enabled in games/TV, when im only running one card. Now, heres the interesting bit, instead of locking down the whole system completely, it just does the freeze thing, for about, 1-2 seconds then resumes, like nothing ever happened.

So it seems my computer can recover from the freeze when only using one card, however, with SLI, it doesnt stand a hope in hell.

Me too, when SLI is disabled, everything is fine. Prime95 estable for 15 Hours nothing wrong can do everything like this was a non-oc system with no problems at all.
When SLI is enabled, I cant watch movies because like you said, once it freezes, there is no hope but to reset the machine.

Yes I get the freeze when watching movies also.

Same story for me

The Asus forums are a bit more frustrating than being amongst the generally more knowledgeable people here!

I feel you brother

[tekjunkie]

The video freezing problem with 790i made it into youtube lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zTGOwr9jgY

[slim142]

Yeah I saw that too ^^

[Coupa]

The Asus forums are a bit more frustrating than being amongst the generally more knowledgeable people here!

I too am reading the Asus forums.

I just cant stand that guy that is insisting that theres nothing wrong with the boards, that no reviewer had problems with it, and that its just bad cards.

Of course, he could be right...Everyone with 2 cards and a 790i board have faulty cards...seems far more likely.

Also, Anandtech did say there was problems with the board.

Still, i have to stop myself signing up to Asus forums just so i dont start getting into a fight with him, thats the last thing i want.

[MomijiTMO]

Have you seen this?

[sargatanas]

I had the same problem with my 2 bfg 9800gx2.
quad-sli disabled -> worked fine
quad-sli enabled -> freeze after freeze.

have a look at ur nforce driver, asus delivered mine with a very very old nforce driver.
my system is stable without freezes since i updated the nforce driver.
and well...don't waste ur timing at asus forums or support. i like my asus boards but support and forum just suxx.

hum...the pinotnoir...i like the pcb, but the wc wasn't even able to cool the board xD

[MomijiTMO]

I'm baffled at how it could function????? It is a very expensive art piece.

[sargatanas]

well don't know how it is supposed to work but actually it doesn't work ^^
like the 1 farad capacitor on it. kinda useless since it should be watercooled.
maybe we see another version of it cause the first pinotnoir, shown at the cebit, is quite a few weeks old xD

[slim142]

Yeah this is probably revision 2 of the board since CeBIT also had it.
I like the board, but just imagine if the Striker II is $450 (started with $480) then this board will pass the $500 mark and thats a desktop board, not even a server board.

[sargatanas]

well I prefer "real" waterblocks like the ones from ek.
I rly like how the Pinotnoir looks like...but I think it's more art than mainboard ^^

[tekjunkie]

Good luck with it. I wish I knew what stability was with this board, I can get Prime 95 stable for 12 hours, and memtest stable, then still get a freeze for no reason.
Regards
Tyke

I got my board today. When I sent the board to Asus, they had asked me to ship just the bare board , when I got it back today, I was expecting to get just the bare board and I was kinda surprised to see a full retail board with all the accessories. Now I have 2 accesory kits and 2 copies of COH

[Warboy]

As I posted in the other Thread I get lockups at Idle, within 1-8 hours of up-time.

[slim142]

I got my board today. When I sent the board to Asus, they had asked me to ship just the bare board , when I got it back today, I was expecting to get just the bare board and I was kinda surprised to see a full retail board with all the accessories. Now I have 2 accesory kits and 2 copies of COH

Get ready for dual LCD poster finally will display 16 characters and dual Supreme FX that equals a Prelude

Wow, you are really lucky! No worries about SATA cables anymore

Please test that board ASAP! BTW, what BIOS did it come with?

[tekjunkie]

Get ready for dual LCD poster finally will display 16 characters and dual Supreme FX that equals a Prelude

Wow, you are really lucky! No worries about SATA cables anymore

Please test that board ASAP! BTW, what BIOS did it come with?

Once I get my NF-P12s and my case tomorrow, I am planning to put my PC together. Please bear with me Slim.

[Warboy]

Get ready for dual LCD poster finally will display 16 characters and dual Supreme FX that equals a Prelude

Wow, you are really lucky! No worries about SATA cables anymore

Please test that board ASAP! BTW, what BIOS did it come with?

Lol, he isn't the only one, I have 1 Maximus Formula Kit, 2 Maximus Extreme, and 1 Striker II Extreme boxes, All linked with RMAs lol.

[tekjunkie]

Lol, he isn't the only one, I have 1 Maximus Formula Kit, 2 Maximus Extreme, and 1 Striker II Extreme boxes, All linked with RMAs lol.

I thought so too(that I wans't the only one). It looks like it's how the RMA process works with Asus. They ask you to ship the bare board, they try to repair it, if they can't repair they ship you a brand new retail board.It also kinda explains why people have been complaining about getting an used board through Asus RMA( read it in some other forum). Lol, they get their own board repaired
and probably they think RMA always means a new board .

[Orion24]

Plaisio finally has the mainstream Yorkfields and my rig is put together at last. I am currently priming stable at 471 FSB and it seems that I'm very close to both mainboard & CPU limit. The ONLY option that allowed me to stabilize at higher FSBs is the NorthBridge Voltage. Everything else had no affect and I returned it at stock. I didn't touch the GTLs yet.

Initial problem with 9800 GTX not booting is unsolved and I am currently with an 8800 GT

[Warboy]

I thought so too(that I wans't the only one). It looks like it's how the RMA process works with Asus. They ask you to ship the bare board, they try to repair it, if they can't repair they ship you a brand new retail board.It also kinda explains why people have been complaining about getting an used board through Asus RMA( read it in some other forum). Lol, they get their own board repaired
and probably they think RMA always means a new board .

It's not New, it's refurb ASUS never ships New unless their out of stock.

[slim142]

Once I get my NF-P12s and my case tomorrow, I am planning to put my PC together. Please bear with me Slim.

Easy, I just want to know how that board is going to perform!
Is it too much if I ask what revision and BIOS do you have on that board?

Looking forward for your results

Lol, he isn't the only one, I have 1 Maximus Formula Kit, 2 Maximus Extreme, and 1 Striker II Extreme boxes, All linked with RMAs lol.

I guess some people just cant get enough SATA Cables xD

[M@G!C]

For those who are having artifacts in windows dreamscene and watching videos:

It happened to me too when running the memory at 1800Mhz with BIOS 702,703,704 but not with 603. Bios 603 is the only from the latest BIOS that doesn´t give me artifacts in Windows dreamscene.

I´ve been strugling with this board for almost 45 days!!!!
By now i should be relaxing, enjoying it and playing my favorites games..... but no..not with this board...

For now i´m completely stable at 1400FSB and memory at 1800Mhz multiplier 8x. Prime95 stable, no hard freezes,no BSOD´s, no freezes when playing games etc... and NO CORRUPTION!!!
I will post my actual settings later.
But i´m not happy with what i have, i realy whant to run at 1800FSB linked and sinked with memory, because perfomance is so much better that way.

[Tyke]

For those who are having artifacts in windows dreamscene and watching videos:

It happened to me too when running the memory at 1800Mhz with BIOS 702,703,704 but not with 603. Bios 603 is the only from the latest BIOS that doesn´t give me artifacts in Windows dreamscene.

I´ve been strugling with this board for almost 45 days!!!!
By now i should be relaxing, enjoying it and playing my favorites games..... but no..not with this board...

For now i´m completely stable at 1400FSB and memory at 1800Mhz multiplier 8x. Prime95 stable, no hard freezes,no BSOD´s, no freezes when playing games etc... and NO CORRUPTION!!!
I will post my actual settings later.
But i´m not happy with what i have, i realy whant to run at 1800FSB linked and sinked with memory, because perfomance is so much better that way.

I have been having the same problems with 1800MHz. The test of stability for me is installing Crysis: even Prime95 stable and memtest passed at 1800MHz, but the system freezes when installing Crysis. It would also freeze at various other times, but always when installing Crysis. So I did a new install of Vista X64, installed no graphics drivers, no NForce drivers - just a basic installation, with my two Raptors in Raid 0 - no SLi etc. At 1800MHz linked and synced, I tried to install Crysis and it froze. I did this three times and each time it froze. I then did a new install, this time I replaced the Raptors, with two of the new VelociRaptors in Raid 0. Same settings, and Crysis installed fine!! Uninstalled and reinstalled Crysis three times, and still no freeze!! Since then, I have played movies, played Crysis, run all the Crysis benchmarks in 2 hour loops, Prime95 - no freeze!!! Then I remembered the problems THG reported with Vista and Raptors last year.

Could it be that the Raptors are the problem?
BTW this was the same with bios 0701, 0703 and 0704.